Milk obtained from milking of animals, such as cows or goats, has been a central product of agricultural production for many centuries. In recent decades, the use of automatic milking equipment has become predominant in industrialised countries due to the associated improvement in speed and efficiency.
In addition, it has become common place to analyse the milk from the animals in order to determine the milk quality and health of the animal. Therefore, some methods have been developed to allow for an analysis to be performed as part of an automated milking process. Specifically, analysis equipment has been developed that can chemically analyse milk samples taking from the milk produced by the milking. A chemical analysis may be performed at the site of the milking thereby allowing an individual farmer to test and analyse the milk as part of the milking process.
However, conventional milking systems are cumbersome to use in connection with the analysis equipment. For example, farmers typically have only one analysis element but may have more than one milking unit, each with milking attachment, such as a set of teat cups, for attaching to an animal to be milked. Therefore, performing an analysis typically involves disconnecting the analysis system from one milking unit, cleaning the analysis system, connecting it to another milking unit, generating a milk sample and performing the analysis. This is a very cumbersome operation, which requires significant manual intervention by the farmer. It is very time consuming, increases the workload and reduces the efficiency and productivity of the milking process.
Furthermore, insufficient cleaning results in the analysis samples being polluted thereby resulting in inaccurate or erroneous analysis results. In order to achieve sufficient cleaning, current health and hygiene standards require that the analysis equipment is thoroughly cleaned by flushing the system with significant amounts of water or of a water-based cleaning solution between analyses. Hence, conventional milking analysis systems are required to be flushed with a water-based cleaning solution to remove remnants from a previous analysis.
Systems for extracting milk samples are known from other patents such as the DE 19547892 patent wherein milk samples are extracted automatically. The milk yield being held in a collector vessel under vacuum, mixed with air when milking is over, after which a part of it is fed to a sampling vessel. The milk is delivered from the latter vessel to an analysing unit for immediate analysis. The milk remaining in the collector vessel is only extracted after analysis is complete, and is fed either to a pipe for usable milk, or to one for non-usable milk, dependent on the result. The first jets of milk when milking starts can be extracted via the pipe for non-usable milk. Before storing milk in the sampling vessel, milk can be directed via the latter into the pipe for non-usable milk, until the preceding sample is displaced.
Another example of a device for extracting milk sample is described in patent DE 3502858, which describes a device for drawing off milk samples from a delivery line, the device is used to divert milk into the sample flask by means of clocked pulses. The object of the invention is to achieve, by means of the above mentioned device, a representative, virtually carry-over-free sample even if the delivery rate changes during a sampling operation.
A third example of a system for extracting milk samples is described in patent DE 4343717 A1, which describes a method and apparatus for taking a milk sample representative of a volume of milk. The method and apparatus minimising the risk of contamination of the milk sample by milk originating from another supply. According to the invention a major component flow of milk is branched off from a main flow and directly conducted to a mixing tank. The mixing tank is flushed by a quantity of milk before the milk branched off in a minor component flow from the main flow and conveyed to the mixing tank and collected therein.
Hence, current systems for analysing milk have a number of disadvantages including being cumbersome, wasteful and time consuming. An improved milking arrangement for analysing the milk would be advantageous.